Shameful!!! Yes, and I am ashamed that the owners are Chinese…
This is why people from hong kong and taiwan don’t like people calling them chinese.
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Or my wife (chinese from malaysia). What can I say?
The city needs to take blame too…They willingly gave subsidies. .Didnt they inspect, before giving out the money? .The city has been stopping builders for 50 years…The chickens have come home to roost…The overcrowding and lack of affordable housing is directly related to rent comtrol, down zoning and nimbys. …
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Well, on the inspections though you do understand that the owners cut up the place to a mini hotel after sign off of a regular legal SFH. The amount of money they made is astonishing. No one should take advantage of those who fought for our country or are extremely needy though but I guess you can argue that hey some of these folks would have been on the street anyway so isn’t something better than nothing?
elt1’s housing for the homeless is better than this.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/fifteen-amazing-shipping-container-homes/
and, a second opinion:
http://markasaurus.com/2015/09/01/whats-wrong-with-shipping-container-housing-everything/
One cannot and should not, take on any mantel of responsibility because of a superficial commonality like race or ethnicity to the perpetrators of a misdeed such as this.
One of my staff, born in Mexico, expresses embarrassment at our business account owners who happen to be Mexican that do not pay their bills. She also is offended by reported criminal acts where the names of the accused appear to be of her nation of birth.
I had a girlfriend in college who’s parents were Germans living in Germany during WWII. It was unbelievable to me what some people did and said to her when they found that out. They acted as though she was an evil Nazi and responsible for wartime atrocities. It had bothered her for her entire life since childhood and had an impact on her psyche as an adult.
I don’t apologize for what white’s did to native Americans or Africans sold into slavery because I happen to be of European decent. I wasn’t there! I wasn’t involved! I can’t even fathom some of it.
You should have no embarrassment or remorse because of your common ancestry to the subjects in this story. You didn’t do this. You would not have done this. It just isn’t really relevant.
The commonality we share, which makes it impossible for most of us to understand this is, we are all humans.
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I may have to go cold turkey for a spell…
Most of us are owners, but if you aren’t…
I second you.
But we have some people who can’t hide their racist, discriminatory feeling towards a race when they mention that race or nationality to make a point. In these cases, I rather say some, people, etc. But not Chinese, Hispanics, or Latinos. Worse, when you mention it more than once and you have been told that’s not acceptable.
We all are human beings, and to deflect on another topic at the same time, we all act conservative and liberal according to the moment. Let’s just not be hypocrites about it.
Who’s the victim here? Tenants should be happy to have a place to live and always have the option to move to better places. Homelessness would be enormously worse than a small home.
City and VA are happy that the homeless veterans are off the street.
Seems the only losers are neighbors who dislike low income tenants. These tenants do not have a car and they do not cause traffic. The only complaint is the garbage generated by the tenants. But that’s the fault of the tenants, not the landlord.
Anyway, this seems to be less a problem and even the mayor does not want to throw the tenants to street
There is a lot of risk with renting out unpermitted units.
It’s one thing to buy a property that is “questionable” (web sites like redfin show it as 3-plex but when you get inside, you notice 6 units), when the previous owner did the modifications and you can claim you did not know better.
It’s another thing if you do the modifications yourself. Especially if you hold a RE license (as this landlord does).
Lack of insurance coverage (hazard/ liability, fire/ damages) is the smallest issue.
The section-8 inspector looks the other way because they want to help their tenant clients.
In this case, there is a possibility that the landlord has to refund all the “illegally” collected rents. I have heard that the refund goes to the tenant, and in other instances, to the local planning department. In the County of Santa Cruz, I think the County is authorized to make an estimate of how much rent the landlord collected (!)… and fine for this amount.
Unpermitted apartments are sometimes called “illegal”, but it is not correct. They are unpermitted.
However, renting them as dwelling to live in… is indeed ILLEGAL.
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In SF, unpermitted inlaw unit is common, sometimes the only unpermitted stuff is just the kitchen. SF and Oakland city governments are more lenient with illegal inlaw. They used to issue building violation and require the landlord to remove the illegal unit which means evicting the tenant. Not any more since they want to keep tenants in unpermitted inlaw units. Actually SF now does not give you a permit to remove illegal unit since they do not want you to evict the tenant in illegal unit. It’s a dilemma for the city now.
In this case, the city sues the landlord for illegal units, however it also warns the landlord not to evict tenants. Question now becomes what the city wants, eviction or keep the illegal subdivision? There is no way to keep tenant and remove unpermitted units at the same time.
So the citty sues the landlord, but do they want to protect tenants or protect building code and neighbors?
Tenants and VA and housing authority love the landlord. Neighbors hate the landlord. Who will have more say on this?
Unless you absolutely love what you are doing and it is not “work” at all for you…
If you look at retirement savings stats, they probably don’t have a choice.
No, totally get it that it is def out of necessity that these folks have to still work at that age. Hopefully, we all are able to just blog on here all day when we all get to that point…
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They are squeezed taking care of parents and boomerang kids…Boomers that didn’t prepare are doomed to work till they drop dead…